Strange things are afoot in the holy temple and Raz, a lowly reptilian monk, investigates uncovering a rising darkness far worse than they imagined.
What Use are Herbs?
Note: The pronouns di (s/he/they), dira (him/her/their/them), diras (his/her/hers/theirs), diraself (him/herself/themself) are used throughout.
In dwindling light, the mountain trail threatened to elude. Distant, Verenesh had briefly glimpsed its sun, Sigik, as the planets drifted out of alignment. The departing eclipse ushering a second, darker dawn. No insane column of moon-bright light struck the pyramid of Azrith. Not now. Flames gilded the city. Pyroclastic snakes of twisting smoke leered over it. Pausing in dira furious ascent, Raz and Har strained to fathom who swooped and fought for the city.
‘There! Who?’ called Har.
‘Hard to discern,’ said Raz, between choppy breaths. ‘An ignion. From this distance … who knows?’
Raz thought it and then Har said it, ‘What of the Imperser I wonder?’
‘What of everyone?’ Raz turned to a climb di wished was over. ‘The city has fallen. Puppets to Zek. Though none of dira comprehend it yet, I wager.’
‘And what of us?’ By the fainter sound of diras voice, Raz surmised Har was still watching the city and had not moved. ‘Are we to roam the wilds? Cross the range to Onrakestown? What?’
‘First,’—Raz eyed the coarse rock and scrappy trees fringing either side of the trail— ‘we should reach our goal.’
‘Herbs? What good are herbs even if cultivated on magia?’ There was a bleakness to Har’s voice only losing a home would stir up. Raz gazed upon Verenesh fighting for its life. Har, resting on diras quant pole, pointed. ‘See! Flames and chaos. And listen …’
Di counted.
Five tolls, no more, no less. The Imperser was dead and so was impartiality. The sagarm were sovereign power now.
‘Did you hear? Did you?’
‘I heard,’ Raz said, barely putting voice to the reply. ‘Let’s go.’
Di scrambled up, scrutinising thinning trees and shrubs and rocky outcrops. Always glancing over dira shoulders. Falling rocks hastened dira on, though nothing ever came of dira warnings. On reaching the herb patch, Har threw diras arms up in exasperation.
‘So we have herbs. Can di be eaten? We should worry about provisions. Food, shelter. Look around.’
‘We have supplies,’ said Raz, hefting diras pack, ‘we have shelter. And hopefully, more food … if di hasn’t eaten it all.’
‘If who hasn’t eaten?’
‘Dira,’ said Raz, gesturing with diras snout.
Sigik had only just crested the peaked eastern roofs to paint the cobbles in serene warmth. There was a crisp exquisiteness to that unreachable light. The city seemed alive. Opulent and tranquil. Raz knew better. Beneath the jade flare of water churned the tangible foulness of the canal city. Within the monolithic sandstone dwellings of Verenesh, citizens hid from blight, and when out in the open, could be heard muttering under dira breaths of the coming eclipse.
Still, it was a scarce delight for acolytes to leave Azrith temple. Customarily, only clerics were consented such liberty. Here, in the slender crack of an alley, rockface walls rebuffed the vivid morning light. Ahead, however, in rampant sunshine, the towpath blazed a spicy crimson.
Raz anticipated the canal, discerning the pond quality to the air with a forked tongue. The alley mouth dappled opalescent tessellations; the stonework alive. Beyond, artisan bridges vaulted urban waterways uniting structures of beauty even nature would struggle to best.
Today, no tourists pored over diraghoni wares in alleys and on towpaths more accustomed to commotion. No piquant scent of grilled rock crawler. No smoked grubs. No hurried click-clack of claws. Not today. In dira stead, towpaths reverberated with phantom memories of emotive morning news and hissed gossip. A canal breeze caressed Raz’s snout as the alley seemed to sigh for Verenesh.
Still a jewel, Raz reminded diraself.
Ahead, obstinate mist refused to lift from a warming canal. The alley di towed dira cart down had a muted acoustic of a city mumbling as though inflicted with a creeping madness. The intermittent squeal of the cart, a warbled cry for help as if translating the city’s anguish into something more tangible.
‘Raz Dev Mil!’ A boater’s companionable croak. Diras flatbottomed boat sat framed in the alley mouth. ‘A taste for a sore tongue!’ The boater flickered diras own tongue. ‘May your teeth be forever white.’
Raz scrabbled for the boater’s name.
Raz dipped diras snout and steepled claws in blessing. ‘Har Jik Yot. May your teeth also be forever white. And please … we are of the same jawline,’—Raz now remembered dira previous encounter—‘and, who knows, mayhaps our seed-teeth grew side by side. So I insist … the two familiars will suffice.’
‘To have jaw kin in Azrith gives me pride. So I insist. The three respects it is. Blessings to you.’
‘Speaking of …’ Raz nodded for diras assistant, Bur Lap, to park the handcart. ‘… time for yours.’
Har’s scaly snout flushed golden sincerity. ‘An honour.’
In rehearsed discipline, Har found out an ornate hand-sized urn and ancient brush box. A matching set and likely priceless heirlooms. In ceremony, Har placed both on the prow upon floral silk. In deft flow, di removed the bone handled brush; opened the silver gilded pendant around diras neck; dabbed the brush; closed the pendant and knelt to the urn. After a prayer, Har commenced brushing diras teeth. Raz began blessings and Bur measured time with spins of a prayer wheel. Three minutes later, the boater swilled diras mouth with a draft from the urn and spat into the canal and finished with a half bow in meditative silence.
Further into the morning, that silence was almost mythic. Har, Raz now recalled, always spoke as fluidly as di punted the canal. Di talked only about blight. A matter which exhausted Raz. Blight first touched Verenesh two moons past; isolated patches of poisoned crops and devastated herb plots followed. No injury had come to the diraghoni people physically, but blight was inflicting mayhem upon city provisions and the economy.
On Raz’s request, Har paused the boat beside clusters of diraghoni congregated for the morning brushing ritual. Di were predominantly two races: crested ignion and spined lairgvrn—scarcely any plain onrake like Raz.
‘Di sneer,’ Bur whispered to Har, perhaps convinced Raz would not hear.
Har stood astern leaning on diras quant pole. ‘Look closed my eyes? I am ‘rake. I see. I know.’
Raz pictured Bur’s snout flushing a cynical emerald colour as the youngling spoke. ‘Not our fault we lack dewlaps.’ Bur flapped the silk adigili drape beneath diras chin that for an ignion or lairgvrn would conceal dira dewlaps and for an onrake gave the impression of dira. Raz saw this, glancing from diras benedictions.
Raz: ‘Yet we remain proud.’
Bur: (startled) ‘Forgive.’
Raz blinked clemency, shimmering diras snout gold. Di nodded for Har to ferry dira onward; to weave the jade canal amidst canyon-red edifices. Di paused to obtain faggots from the wood merchant and conduct brushings for patrons while tilting a tympanum to listen to hearsay from abroad.
Extravagant diraghoni talked below luxuriant balconied dwellings where flagstone towpaths were hemmed with gilded iron-flowered railings. Pleurodonts, Raz presumed. Often such dental heritage exhibited barefaced conceit. Yet di await lowly acrodonts, Raz told diraself, supressing pleasure at the affront di displayed with sapphire-tinted snouts and swaying tails. Di addressed each other in pantomime intensity to ensure the offence was acknowledged.
‘Cleric Jak Kor Mil. Where is di?’
‘Have we paid insult?’
‘Husssh! It will hear.’
‘It? I count three.’
Raz called hallowed greetings, blessing teeth and wishing longevity despite an ashamed conviction to the opposite. A silk-swathed ignion bowed. Amber and ruby red embroideries glinted hummingbird metallics. ‘A pleasurable change. Sincerely, we anticipate Jak Kor Mil ails not.’
Raz spoke with imposturous authority. ‘Sagarm cleric is quite well.’ It was mischief, yet the temptation too enormous not to add: ‘Occupied with more crucial matters.’
Ignion crests blushed insult. ‘Of course. High Sagarm approaches the end of diras life …’ Prayer-like in its timbre, a chorus of bogus sympathy rose. The three respects of everyone were collected and personal blessings paid with insincere politeness.
‘Di’s no cleric,’ someone croaked brazenly.
Such overt snobbery never ceased to injure Raz. Di had learned to conceal the hurt. Yes, di was onrake. Yes, it was plain di had no dewlap. Yes, di was of acrodontan heritage and onrake nonetheless! A double curse. It was always the same: downward glances, a drop of the tail, a darkened snout. All badges of prejudice. Long tired of this, Raz gave no gratification to such displays. Instead, di stood unashamed of diras onrake heritage.
Bur, who had been disposed to concerning fiery displays of insolence as of late, grumbled derision and Raz, loath to do diras duty, reproved Bur with a punitive frown. Afterwards, blessings proceeded smoothly and Raz and company were released of duty to the waterways.
A vow broken. Raz bounded down Azrith steps not daring to glance over diras shoulders for followers, nor to the column of unnatural light in the ecliptic darkness.
A tolling bell.
Di had to glance up at the sound of that. Had felt the great column of light bloom to its clamour. The chanting became palpable as though the pillar of light seared out every other noise leaving only fanatic voices in its wake. Yet the world was wholly dark beyond that column. A darkness that chilled Verenesh.
A dark deed is done.
A commotion erupted. The base of the pyramid awash with the Imperser’s guard. Then, pouring from Balarish alleys into Azrith’s grounds; cloaked Zek Tuh cultists leapt. Living shadows, screaming for the Imperser’s teeth. Raz hurried the remaining steps, lunging from statue to transition shrine to obelisk, di fled the onslaught. A sudden downdraft; the first feral ignion, naked and bereft of armour—or perhaps cultist robes? Impossible to discern to which side the transmogrified ignion belonged.
This is no simple onrake coup. The Dark Sun really do bring Zek back.
Raz could have wept. There was nothing for it but to flee Verenesh.
The gunnel rubbed the stone lip of the sun-warmed towpath beside the herb store. Har secured the boat to the mooring ring and immediately fell to gossiping with a fisher. The exterior store, festooned with dilapidated baskets and crates, foretold the sparseness to be anticipated within. In recollected visits with master Jak Kor Mil, di had spilled over with herbs and dried goods for sagarm blessings. Raz instructed Bur to mind the firewood and ducked into the store.
Like victims of battle, vacant baskets, crates and boxes lay strewn about. Precarious stacks seemed to clamour for the doorway and windows. Raz located a supine onrake, belly down on diras basking slab, relishing the stream of sunlight pouring through the largest window.
Raz hissed courteously and the proprietor’s eyes snapped open. Now what was diras name? ‘Forgive the disruption,’ said Raz.
‘Jak Kor?’ the onrake asked.
Winking away drowsiness, the proprietor rose crossing legs and allowing diras tail to slip off the basking slab. Raz foresaw diras future in that ancient creature. Like Raz, the proprietor was dewlapless. Short spines filed down a crestless head and, unlike ignions and especially lairgvrns, di had a rounded blunt snout. The skeletal nature of the store reflected its custodian’s frame well. Temple life had fed Raz well, though. Di swapped bows and names and Raz apologised for master Jak’s absence. The proprietor, Jil Bok Gar, slid gingerly from the basking slab to the dusty floor.
Jil: ‘May your teeth be forever white.’
Raz: (returning the blessing and looking around) ‘Your store … I beseech Saint Rad Sik for some secret reserve. High Holy Sagarm is in want.’
Jil: ‘Certainly.’
Jil hobbled in painstaking lurches coughing and wheezing towards a disordered counter. A din ensued. Di plucked jars, pots and boxes from behind the worktop. Built a wall of unfilled, grubby containers. Argued with diraself, and then disappeared through a beaded curtain. After the herb dust had settled, Jil returned golden-snouted with a wax paper package clasped in diras claws. Di placed the package on the counter. Fresh herb scent hit Raz as Jil unfolded it and pinned it open like butterfly’s wings with small iron lotus-shaped weights. Raz selected a sprig between claws. Sniffed and tasted the air around it and raised an eye crest.
Jil: ‘For sagarms only.’ (coughing) ‘Fresh.’
Raz: ‘Magia? Powerful. Rich cleansing scent … impressive.’
Jil: ‘A good batch.’
Raz: (folding the package) ‘Business is—’
Jil: ‘Slower than a snow snake.’
Raz: ‘Such herbs,’ (sliding the package close) ‘where did you acquire this? Blight has ravaged all but the hardiest crops, common herbs and lesser cleansing herbs and even those seeded in magia enriched soil …’
Jil: ‘Broken Tooth Mountain.’
Raz: (surprised) ‘You travelled all that way?’
Jil: ‘Wah! See me—a bag of bones—making such a climb, do you?’
Raz: (snout flushing a gold diraghoni smile) ‘An assistant then?’
Jil: ‘Of sorts.’ (Trekking towards the basking slab) ‘A sagarm cleric.’
Jil eased back up onto the sun-warmed stone leaving Raz to diras thoughts. Intriguing. Herbs? News to me. Strange for a sagarm to be collecting herbs in the wild. Especially a cleric.
Raz: ‘You have diras respects?’
Jil: (silence then sudden recollection) ‘Ah! Sagarm cleric Hev Nar Jar—‘gvyrn I believe.’
Mystery solved, thought Raz. Correct in the three respects … though an acolyte Hev Nar is. Assistant to Cleric in Line. Raz mulled the news.
Raz: ‘Trekking to the mountains, you say?’
Jil: (already dozing in sunlight) ‘Once a week … at least.’
Raz: ‘Hev Nar harvests magia infused herbs untouched by blight?’
Jil: ‘Harvest? A grand word. Sprigs only. Keeps the rest,’ (yawning) ‘for the sagarm I suppose.’
No. Not at all, Raz considered. Di intended to bid Jil farewell. Instead, di placed the payment of frills on the counter and left the proprietor in the deep headiness of basking. A thought followed Raz out of the store: once every chamber had been hazy with blessed magia herb. Yet, not since the blight. If Hev Nar has been gathering herb, then what is di doing with it all?
The winged ignion swooped through impure darkness to engulf a serpentine lairgvrn busy constricting and crushing its enemies. It was hard to discern who fought for whom. This is madness! Raz’s mind rolled over and over. Across the flagstones, four-legged onrake bounded ripping and tearing fellow diraghoni apart.
Azrith flows with diraghoni blood, all is lost.
Raz ran.
What of Jak?
Raz leapt.
What of the good sagarm?
Raz dodged.
What of Verenesh?
Raz ducked.
The sagarms had been misled—the city had been misled. Twist after turn Raz looked over diras shoulders for pursuers. Di burst onto the towpath. Fires. The flutter of black cloaks. Madness painted in dira wake. Diraghoni fought. Some in feral form. Some, the vow-proud, unchanged. The wise would leave if di could. Wheeling round a corner, Raz collided. Black robes enveloped dira like the skin-stretched wings of an ignion.
‘My sagarm! You live,’—Har’s voice a blessed relief—‘praise Sik Rad!’
‘We must away,’ Raz gasped, quelling the shock.
‘Come … the smuggler’s routes!’
Har threaded elusive steps. Through familiar alleys. Over and under bridges. Di landed canal side utterly breathless. Har’s boat bore welcome fruit: stuffed hide satchels; bedding rolls; packages bound in cloth that Raz anticipated was food. In di leapt and, after finding out a tattered cloak for Raz, Har heaved dira away.
Har poled dira flatbottomed boat from peaceful shaded narrows to the sunlit Central Confluence by mid-afternoon. Diraghoni lounged on basking stones at the water’s edge from where the noon reek of algae and tang of rotten egg rose. Yet visitors only ever spoke of Vereneshian waterways kindly, turning a blind snout to the corruption beneath. Voices of traders in alcoves and openings danced where the shrill witter of birds had once been and Raz could pretend everything was normal with diras eyes closed, reclined in the boat and appreciating Sigik. Suddenly, the boat came to a bobbing stop.
Har: ‘Boater’s dispute.’
Raz: (eyes closed) ‘This is the Central Confluence … are there not plenty customers to share?’
Har: ‘Ha! If only. Poor harvests mean scant markets. Soon, customers stop coming. Even us boaters have no immunity. We are as good as poisoned by blight.’
Bur: ‘Can we intervene?’
The boat rocked to Bur’s words. Di perched the prow, with a mind no doubt burgeoning with solutions. Younglings were always so eager to fix.
Har: ‘And risk a swim? Better to wait … and watch.’
Raz: (eyes open now) ‘This is not Azrith. Nor di clerics whose minds have been tempered and honed through decades of study and contemplation.’
Bur: (in a tediously rehearsed manner) ‘My sagarm, you are right. Har Jik, you are wise. A lesson is learned.’
Har accepted the poorly delivered apology, muttered diras resignations about the delay and set to peeling a vivid orange klashka fruit that must have cost a good few frills. The fruit was plump, the skin glossy and vigorous. When asked, Har informed Raz it was an import from blight free Aktos. Raz dozed on that fact as the boaters argued on.
A knock—prow on stern—tapped dira boat to gentle motion. Har swapped grievances with the pilot, then grievances of the dispute and resultant jam.
‘Klashka! Lillips!’ called a fruit seller as di brought dira modest haul to a skilled stop beside Raz. Gunnels kissed. Unperturbed by Har’s rude gestures and demands to be gone, the pithy hawker appealed to the towpath.
After many refusals Raz took pity. ‘Over here. Lillips … two of the best. And the debt?’
‘Each a frill.’
Spiney purple fruit and frills exchanged hands. Closer scrutiny showed the pallid fruit to be a meagre blight survivor. Raz tossed one to Bur who seemed grateful for something to distract from diras sulk. Naturally, Raz and the hawker fell into polite conversation which, predictably, turned to blight. With a few deft questions, Raz elicited the hawker’s own theory: withering crops stifled trade, news of blight frightened away foreigners, traders, and tourists alike and with sacred herb lacking … what would protect the city?
‘Protect? From what?’ Raz asked.
The hawker knelt on the prow and whispered, ‘Dark Sun.’ Diras snout pointed skyward. Raz assumed the forthcoming planetary alignment and subsequent eclipse was implied. Portents had been read. Clerics and shaman over Verenesh were hissing about it.
‘Speak you of the cult or the eclipse?’
The hawker huffed loud and adamant. ‘Are both not allied? Besides …’ di shrugged as if that gesture alone strengthened the legitimacy of what di said, ‘seen dira I have.’
‘Here? In Verenesh?’
Jerking diras head, the hawker froze incredulous. A wrinkled snout asked where have you been? After examination of Raz and Bur’s garb, the hawker said, ‘Sure … You sagarms’re cloistered up in Azrith.’
‘Prior to blight,’ said Raz, ‘yes.’ Except clerics who would bless and buy herb. ‘Times are pressing and we are too few.’
‘And getting fewer,’ the hawker returned, in poor witticism. Raz failed to enjoy the humour as much as the hawker seemed to. And this news of the extremist cult in Verenesh …
‘Tell me,’ Raz said, disregarding the jibe, ‘what whispers reach your tympana?’
‘Many whispers reach these tympana. A few frills would see dira reach yours.’ The hawker gave a shrewd blink. Har hooted and shook diras head at the nerve. The hawker narrowed diras eyes in Har and Bur’s direction and added, ‘An extra frill for each unwanted snout.’
With a palm of frills and time to spare, Raz raised an eye crest. ‘Well?’
The hawker took the coins. ‘Dark Sun’s rising. That symbol of diras I mean.’
‘City guild scrubbing walls is not news,’ said Raz. For a moment the hawker seemed caught in a lie. Raz would see dira toil harder for the frills.
‘Di is to return.’ Pointing skyward again.
‘Again, my dear Gah,’—and there was discourtesy in the use of singular names—‘this is no more news than the last. Toothlings know this prophecy.’
‘It’s no simple prophecy. The Dark Sun are very real. Folk make prophecies come true.’ The hawker’s words were like throwing knives scattered in defence of a wounded ego. ‘My tongue is forked but you’ll not hear deception from it.’ The hawker swelled. ‘Plots … the dark comes, as will Di. Those whispering black cloaks are as resolute as my own words.’
‘Di? You mean …’ Raz postured for the alveolar sibilant and in a flash, the hawker snatched it away.
‘Don’t! We’re not to speak it.’
Superstitious? Magia was so misunderstood. Humans had a word for it: alchemy. And when sagarms spoke magia, logical process and judicious experimentation was inferred. Citizens, however, gorged on fantasies while turning up snouts to explanations.
‘I can see you are not a believer,’ said the hawker.
‘I simply understand. Sagarms deal not in belief. Diras teeth are entombed. A salt-filled canopic jar in an urn repository forgotten beneath Azrith.’
A dismissive wave. The hawker was happy in fantasies it appeared and pressed diras theory on herb: how lacking magia left Verenesh defenceless. Raz bore no energy for such arguments. Resting, di nodded in the right places. With a few whispered utterances, Bur defended against snubs cast at onrake.
Bur: (snarling) ‘We onrake are not Dira.’
The hawker: ‘Di took feral—abused magia …’
Raz: ‘And thereafter, primordial form was restricted and we sagarm renounced transmogrification in its entirety.’
For Raz, that was the end of the argument. The boat jolted as if to confirm it. Har eased away and the bickering—on all accounts—concluded to Raz’s relief. Under a high-arched bridge, the flat-bottomed boat glided. Forsaken nests gagged the stone mouths of immortalised founders of Verenesh carved there.
Amidst the watery slapping echoes Raz could almost hear the natter of chicks as though the city were free of blight. Di resumed basking.
To be continued …
M F ALFREY 